Inc.com released a really great article on the best 12 Ways to Attack Any Challenge. As we go through our daily work days and even personal lives we continuously face challenges that may throw us off our normal path.
Jeff Haden points out key steps to begin to accomplish the impossible and be proactive in turning a challenge into a victory.
Accept
Be who you are. Learn to think about the people you admire and pick a few of their qualities to emulate, not their accomplishments. You can’t be them. The cool thing is, they can’t be you.
Let others be who they are. Your customers, your vendors, your suppliers… they aren’t going to change. Don’t expect them to. Pick one source of frustration and decide what you will do differently, including, possibly, walking away.
Assist
Help an employee. Don’t wait to be asked. Pick someone who is struggling and offer to help.
Help a superstar. Counterintuitive? No way. Compared to others, the best-performing people don’t need help so they rarely get it. As a result, they’re often lonely, at least in a professional sense. Offer to help with a specific task. Not only will you build a nice interpersonal bridge, some of their skills or qualities might rub off on you.
Help anyone. Few things feel better than helping a person in need. Take a quick look around; people less fortunate than you are everywhere.
Analyze
Change measurements. Over time we all develop our own ways to measure our performance. Measuring your performance in different ways forces you to look at what you regularly do from a new perspective.
Change benchmarks. Look for companies or people with similar assets, backgrounds, etc. and try to beat their results. Then, after you do, choose another target.
Approach
Go opposite. If you haven’t reached a goal then what you’re currently doing isn’t working. Instead of tweaking your approach, take an entirely different tack. Pick one goal you’re struggling to achieve and try a completely different approach.
Drop one thing. We all have goals. Often we have too many goals; it’s impossible to do 10 things incredibly well. Take a look at your goals and pick at least one that you’ll set aside, at least for now. (Don’t feel bad about it. You weren’t reaching your goals anyway, so what’s the harm in dropping a few?)
Change your workday. Get up earlier. Get up later. Take care of emails an hour after you start work. Eat at your desk. Pick one thing you do on a regular basis, preferably something you do for no better reason than that’s the way you always do it and therefore it’s comfortable, and do that one thing in a different way or at a different time. Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt. Sometimes familiarity breeds complacency, and complacency is a progress and improvement killer.
Adopt
Choose a new habit. Successful people are successful for a reason, and that reason is often due to the habits they create and maintain. Take a close look at the people who are successful in your field: What do they do on a regular basis? Then adopt one of their habits and make it your own.
Choose someone to mentor. I learn more when I teach than the people I’m trying to teach. When you mentor another person you accomplish more than just helping someone else. You build your network—and more importantly, you learn a few things about yourself
